Choosing between hosted IT (run from a cloud environment) and onsite IT (run from owned hardware) is one of the key decisions an organisation needs to make to ensure its IT setup is both cost and effort-effective.
Below are some of the considerations you should make when choosing the right setup for you.
BENEFITS OF CLOUD HOSTED IT
- The principal benefit of cloud hosted IT is that your organisation is free from the costs of acquisition, installation and maintenance of key IT hardware (primarily servers).
- Cloud hosted IT generally comes with external support, so organisations save money on the staff to operate and maintain IT equipment.
- Because your IT or cloud partner manages and owns the equipment that supports your cloud environment, they’ll absorb the cost of upgrading equipment.
- Upscaling is also much faster and less expensive – generally, you’ll only pay for the data you need and can add new capacity easily.
- Cloud hosting requires high-end, enterprise-level IT equipment, so organisations generally benefit from better systems performance as a result of choosing a cloud provider.
- Automated backups of cloud-hosted data improve the overall security of your business information. A cloud-hosted setup should also offer your organisation with a reliable backup and disaster recovery solution.
- Most cloud infrastructure will be monitored 24/7 either by software, staff or both. There will also be a contractually obligated uptime for the cloud environment, ensuring the reliability of your hosted setup.
DRAWBACKS OF CLOUD HOSTED IT
- The downside of cloud hosted IT is that it requires an internet connection, and ideally a good one. An intermittent connection will leave you unable to access your data. That said, there are few organisations that aren’t reliant on a stable internet connection now.
- Control over your data is limited to the allowance of the hosting company. You are also reliant on them for security data centre environments must be independently verified to ISO 9001 and 27001 security standards.
- Technical issues involving cloud hosted IT, though rare, take issues out of your hands. It requires your cloud partner to act in a time-sensitive manner according to the agreed SLA.
BENEFITS OF ONSITE IT
- The main advantage of onsite IT is complete control of the IT infrastructure. Your company can scale up or down as it pleases.
- Your organisation is in charge of its own security and systems. You’ll know your setup and can implement the best security you can afford.
- Your data is in the hands of your organisation, which means you don’t need the internet to access your data. It also means there are potentially fewer GDPR implications for data storage (which may be important to organisations in some industries).
- Downtime and technical difficulties are within your control. Managers may find comfort in being able to talk to, and watch, staff make fixes.
DRAWBACKS OF ONSITE IT
- Onsite IT is much more expensive in most cases. Your organisation has to spend on acquiring, installing, and maintaining your IT infrastructure. You also have to spend on hiring personnel to work on and maintain it. And you’ll also pay to power it all.
- It is both expensive and time consuming to perform upgrades, especially where hardware is involved. Organisations have to budget for the potential of a server failure at the least convenient time, and the ramifications that might have to business continuity.
- Without a decent backup and disaster plan – which you’ll also have to manage yourself – your organisation stands the risk of losing everything in the case of a disaster (anything from a major fire to a leaking pipe above your equipment).
- From backup to capacity expansion, the chances of human error are increased because your staff will be interacting with your IT infrastructure more than if data is hosted in a cloud network.
- You are limited to the expertise of your IT staff member(s) if something goes wrong. If a problem occurs out-of-hours or over a weekend, it may not be discovered until it is too late, or a fix may not happen until the IT staff’s contracted hours.
CONCLUSION
Ultimately, your organisation’s requirements are what determines the best IT infrastructure setup.
If you want total control, onsite IT solutions may be a more attractive option. However you have to bear much more responsibility for maintenance, expansion and security, which are both complex and expensive.